Ticking clocks and fluffy pygmy puffs
by hawkeye89891
Summary: Very quick one-shot about Fred and George after the battle (Fred is alive!) at their shop. George has a hobby, he likes clocks, he likes their ticking and explains why. Fred understands, but... wishes he had a hobby as well. Please review! I hope you like it!


If anyone asked him, what was his favourite sound in the world, George Weasley would have said the ticking of a clock. He had them all over the shop and flat at number 93 Diagon Alley, home of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes with him and Fred.

George liked to hear them as he lay asleep in his room and maybe he was more like his dad because he liked to collect them. Fred often joked that George was going to end up like dad, but George didn't care. He had a hobby. Everyone has one.

With George, it was clocks.

The twins had two bedrooms, for their own privacy of course above the shop and for a while after the battle, the shop had been closed whilst Fred had been recovering in St Mungo's. No one thought he had made it, they all thought the worse, even George. But he had recovered.

Now, business was back to normal you could say. People wanted more and more laughs after the battle, even though a whole three years had passed since that day. One morning, about an hour before opening times, Fred climbed the stairs to George's room, a teapot and cups floated behind him whilst a bowl of sugar bounced along afterwards.

Fred opened the door. George was at his desk, working on something. Fred walked over. "Morning Gred."  
"Morning Forge. Just set the tea down will you?"  
Fred waved his wand and the tea set placed itself down on a desk. He looked over at George.  
"Don't tell me... Another clock. Honestly George, where has this obsession come from?"

George paused and sighed, looking at the cuckoo clock he had been repairing. He could have done it by magic, but he liked this way. He looked at Fred, before looking back at the clock. "When... When you were in hospital, everyone was just... Waiting. One day, dad found me in his shed, looking at stuff and I saw a clock. I wanted to fix it, because... It wasn't ticking. It was broken and it needed to be fixed."

Fred frowned, but stayed silent. George turned a bit in his chair and looked at him. "I fixed it by hand, not magic and... I felt so much better, I had done that. I had made it tick again and it sounded nice. I liked the ticking of it. That night, I took it to our old room and put it on the wall and listened to it. To me, it was a comfort when you..."

"When I what?"  
"When you wasn't there. The ticking was always there."  
"But, I'm here now! What am I, your next door neighbour?"

George laughed a bit. "Look, everyone has a hobby Fred. Clocks are mine." He stood up and made himself some tea. "I was thinking of a sweet, something to do with clocks."  
"It could turn people into clocks?" Fred ask, making his own tea.

"Possibly. Or maybe when they speak, it just comes out as a series of clock alarm bells."  
"Or a cuckoo!"

The twins laughed for a moment, before George sat back down. Fred looked at the other clocks on the wall and could understand why his brother had started collecting them. They kept the silence at bay and some of them were rather lovely. Some of them were magical, others were not.

George loved them all and carefully restored each one and either sold it or kept it. Fred looked over at the one George was currently fixing. "What one is that?"  
"Oh, for a little old woman not too far from here. Muggle. She likes to give me free cakes when I fix up her clocks."

Fred raised his eyebrows and finished his tea. "Maybe I should take up a hobby."  
"I don't see why not." George finished and placed the clock in a large, orange and purple box. Fred frowned a bit.  
"But what though?"  
"Well, the shop is both of ours.. Clocks are mine. You'll think of something." George said as he walked out to the kitchen to get some breakfast.

Fred frowned and brought the empty tea set out with him, the teapot emitting tiny little burps every now and then. George got some toast for himself, whilst looking through a book, which was currently floating in mid-air. _The advances of clock-making_.

Fred smiled and left him to it, going downstairs and turning on the lights and making sure everything was set up for the day. He then stopped and noticed a stray... Pink fluffball sitting on the stairs. It was a Pygmy Puff and it looked rather depressed. It must have gotten left behind when they were moving the cages, for Pygmy puffs it said were creatures that needed friends.

Fred frowned and bent down. Picking it up, he placed it back in its cage among its fellows, where it picked up and began to squeak with earnest, as though eager to tell its companions of the day it had. Fred smiled and left them to it.

The following day, George was coming back from delivering his clock and transferring his money into Galleons, sickles and knuts. He stopped by the shop and froze. "What the..."

The windows on the second floor were now a blaze of pink and purple. George ran in, thinking something had happened to Fred, but when he came in, he was bombarded by an army of Pygmy puffs, all squeaking away. There was more than there was yesterday. "Fred?!"

"Up here!" Fred's head popped up from a giant ball of squirming fuzz. There was a purple Pygmy puff that sat proudly on his head, almost surveying his kingdom. George grinned a bit. "What did you do? We only had twenty!"

"Well... I found a potion that multiplied them! I've got orders in from china. From China George! And from America!"  
"How many did you... multiply?!"  
"Oh... Maybe about, two hundred…"  
"What?!"  
"Yeah, but they will all be sold fast and by the way, guess what?"

George frowned and wondered about the state of his clocks. Fred read his mind. "Oh don't worry, your clocks are safe."  
"I hope they are. What were you going to tell me?"  
"I found a hobby!"


End file.
